Lawrence Miles seems to have an excess of ideas....
Christmas On A Rational Planet by Lawrence Miles
Seventh Doctor Adventures number: 52
Originally published: July 1996
Companions: Roz & Chris
"An end to history. An end to certainty. Is that too much to ask?"
December, 1799. Europe is recovering from the Age of Reason, the Vatican is learning to live with Napoleon, and America is celebrating a new era of independence. But in New York State, something is spreading its own brand of madness through the streets. Secret societies are crawling from the woodwork, and there's a Satanic conspiracy around every corner.
Roz Forrester is stranded in a town where festive cheer and random violence go hand-in-hand. Chris Cwej is trapped on board the TARDIS with someone who's been trained to kill him. And when Reason itself breaks down, even the Doctor can't be sure who or what he's fighting for.
Christmas is coming to town, and the end of civilisation is following close behind...
Ah - another Lawrence Miles book. My first since reviewing "Alien Bodies" way back in part one of this strand. But this time, it's his first Seventh Doctor story - and apparently his first ever published novel. Will I start to see the genius that apparently everyone else does ?
Well let's get the bad news out of the way first.
This is a book about Order versus Chaos. Or Reason versus Superstition. Or Faith versus Science. Or Man versus Woman. It has big themes and strong metaphors. It has opinions and Larry *wants* you to know what he thinks - so you'd better listen, because he's going to keep telling you, over and over and over again, until it sinks in.
That's all very well and good - I don't mind a healthy dose of subtext. The problem is, some of it's all a bit…clumsy, and other elements are just, well, dare I say it, slightly dodgy.
I don't buy this "men are the architects, women are the chaotic ones" concept one little bit. I don't mind the gynoids - 'female' robots that aren't created but 'just are' , sure that's an interesting idea - but the fact that by being female they are less rational - nah, I'm not having that. In an infinite universe are there really only two genders - and men are the important builders ?
Sexist? Quite possibly.
The first half of the book is also confusing to the point of being incomprehensible. Maybe its deliberate. Maybe it's first novel jitters. Maybe I'm just stupid. But Miles seems to have the concentration span of a gnat.
He flits between scenes faster than a Weeping Angel - so much so that you've had no chance to digest what is going on before - zip - its onto the next thing. It's like literary whiplash. I only just managed to keep up, and that was only after going back a few pages because I thought I'd missed something.
Then there's the Amaranth - the most maguffiniest of macguffins, without which large sections of the story just wouldn’t work. Sure, anyone can make things up to get their story going. That's fiction. But it take a special kind of Lawrence to write yourself a "rational" device which can warp reality and solve any knotty plot corners you might get yourself into.
Okay, maybe I'm being a trifle unfair.
Lastly, Don't ask me to name any of the supporting characters. Apart from the guy who was so tightly wound he might explode, none of them were even the slightest bit memorable. And if I had to read the word "cacophony" one more time, I think I would have screamed out loud and frightened my fellow train passengers.
But after all that moaning, what *did* I like ? Lot's of bits and pieces actually - and despite my criticisms, the book does all start to come together in the second half.
The Carnival Queen was an intriguing villain, stemming from Time Lord pre-history and supposedly a representation of all their irrationality. Who knows if the tale she told was actually real or not - it could have all been a deception.
As we know from "Alien Bodies", Miles likes wrestling with Doctor Who mythology and twisting it into new weird shapes - and it's no different in this book. So here, along with the origins of the "Watchmakers", we also have the first mention of "Grandfather Paradox", a bottle universe. *and* Time Lord biodata possibly being played with,
Then there's the peculiar, if slightly disturbing idea of the game "Eighth Man Bound" - played as a way for bored young Timelords to get a glimpse into their own future. Of course the Doctor is one of the only Time-teens to see his Eighth incarnation - foreshadowing much ?
All that and a possible explanation as to why the Third Doctor had a tattoo.
It's all good fun, and you can clearly see Miles putting the building blocks in place for the kind of stories he wants to tell in the future.
I also enjoyed his consideration that the Doctor is defined by his companions and needs them to give his existence meaning - something that the new series has picked up on several times.
That along with his excellent grand speech summing up why the Doctor does things - "Reasons. Principles, truth , love and harmony. Peace and goodwill. The best of intentions". Lovely.
It all makes me think that Miles *does* understand the core character of the Doctor. Underneath all the radical concepts and challenging prose he gets it. In fact, based on the two novels of his I've read so far, I'd say he's more in tune with the Seventh Doctor than the Eighth.
The companions don't suffer too badly either. Both Roz and Chris get a bit of backstory - Roz perhaps more so - which is good for someone like me who is reading their stories out of order.
Roz is also the more competent of the two. I can't see her fiddling with things she doesn’t understand and accidently destabilising the TARDIS !
Speaking of which, the whole concept of the "Interface" and how it manifests on the TARDIS walls was a lot of fun - as were the various rooms and corridors Chris encountered on his travels. I particular enjoyed the fact that the TARDIS library's copy of "A Passage To India" contains a series of dimensional portals, each leading to a different location.
On a more sombre note, Woodwicke’s witch hunt (and it's very….localised apocalypse) is definitely a reflection of some of the paranoia, conspiracy theories and hatred for "the other" that was prevalent in the 80s and 90s. Sadly the same distasteful behaviours and cult-like ideas can be seen in the society of today, with the current persecution of ethnic minorities and those in the LGBTQIA+ community.
It seems we are always doomed to repeat the mistakes and the hatred of the past, whether in literary form or the real world…
Finally, I read that there is a fan theory that this book contains references to every Doctor Who TV story. I've no idea if that is true - but I did spot a few obvious ones, such as Chris mentioning that "We can’t change history. Not one line" and nods to Quarks, Invisible Daleks, Morbius, the Taran Wood Beast and a bit of Venusian Akido.
Haiiii !!!!!
So, okay Mr Miles, I think you won me over with this one. A few annoyances but in the end a pretty intelligent and original first story
What do you have for us next ?
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